Game
modes

Exhibition
Mode

A simple baseball game where players choose their captain and
players. Players will choose how many innings to play. Batting
order is determined by a coin toss. Players can also choose to play
a stadium at morning or night.(To play in a night game you need to
perform a certain task in the game.)

Challenge
Mode

The player starts as Mario and must recruit all the characters.
This is also where to unlock all characters and stadiums. The plot
of this mode is that Bowser Jr. is taking over the ball parks.

The player can choose between five different captains, Mario and
the unlockable captains Yoshi (Yoshi Park), Donkey Kong (DK
Jungle), Wario (Wario City), and Peach (Peach Ice Garden). He can
switch captains at any time during gameplay. Then he goes to each
stadium and unlocks players until he has a good enough team to
challenge Bowser Jr. which lasts for 3 innings. After defeating
Bowser Jr., his stadium, Bowser Jr.'s Playroom, is replaced with
Bowser's Castle. Then the player must either challenge Bowser
which lasts for 5 innings or keep unlocking characters to make an
even better team. In order to recruit the players, you must either
free them from Bowser's minions, help them with their problems,
complete a scout mission that they assign you, or if you're
recruiting the Nokis, you'll need a specific Noki in your
roster.

At each stadium there is a shop where the player can buy various
error items, special bats, special gloves, pitching control
power-ups, and other items with coins that you find in random
places. One of these other items is Luigi's Flashlight, which then
unlocks the stadium Luigi's Mansion (which can only be used at
night). Another is the Daisy Cruiser pass, which unlocks Daisy's
Cruiser. Also, when a player unlocks the secret shop pass, the
Daisy Cruiser is its hideout. The player must go to the cruiser at
night to access the shop, however. In each ball park, Bowser Jr.
and two of Bowser's minions are in control of them. To get rid of
these baddies, the player must challenge them to a battle mission.
Bowser Jr. will challenge the player to three different battles: A
battle mission where the player's team is behind 1 run and must
mount a comeback, three ball games which all last for 1 inning (In
the second and third games, Bowser Jr. will start the game with 1
and 2 points already on his team's side, respectively), and in
Yoshi Park, he will challenge the player to a minigame called
Piranha Panic. In ball games, the innings and the item rules cannot
be changed.

Minigames

Some minigames can only be played in day or night time. There
are 9 minigames in total. However, several of the minigames are
unlockable. Some minigames only play with the Wii Remote with Nunchuk and the Wii Remote sideways.

Toy Field

Players try to hit baseballs to point spaces all around the
field. The other players try to catch the ball. If a player catches
a ball, it is his turn to bat. At the end of the game, king medals
are awarded for various achievements. The computer adds up the
score and the player with the most points will win. Toy Field can
be played with the Wii
Remote with Nunchuk, or with the Wii Remote
sideways.

Practice

Records

Shows MVPs of exhibition games, star players in challenge mode
and high scores of the minigames. There are also videos, and when
the game is completed, the records will show the ending movie.

Gameplay

A pre-release screenshot of Yoshi up at bat against Bowser
Jr.

The gameplay of Mario Super Sluggers is similar to that
of its predecessor; the main difference being the controls, with
the Wii Remote adding immersion using a control scheme similar to
the Baseball sub-game in Wii Sports.[4] There
are three control methods available: Wii Remote by itself, Wii
Remote and the Nunchuk, and the Wii Remote held sideways.

Reception

In comparison to other Mario sports titles, Mario Super
Sluggers received only fair reviews. The lack of online play
was a generally major factor in the reviews of Mario Super
Sluggers. IGN gave Mario
Super Sluggers 7.4/10, explaining that the game is fun but
just the same game it played three years earlier. Gamespot
gave the game 6.5/10, saying that it was for Mario collectors and
"Wii Party hosts "only.[6]Gametrailers gave the game 6.7/10 and
explained that a game that was published by Nintendo should have Wii Sports motions, but does not. It also
noted some balance issues, the lack of improvement in presentation
from the original Mario Superstar Baseball, issues with pitching,
and the fact that it is a baseball game with little baseball.
Gametrailers also noted that "It doesn't make much use off the
system's capabilities with limited motion control and no online
play." Overall that prompted them to say in their video review,
"The wait for a solid hard ball game on the Wii is heading into
extra innings." [7]

Despite this, Mario Super Sluggers was nominated for
the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards, in which it lost to Guitar
Hero: World Tour.

Awards

Promotion

As part of the North American marketing launch, Nintendo created
a series of collectible online cards along with mariosupersluggerscards.com, a website that
served as a virtual collector’s album. The site promises that the
series will include a card for each of the forty-one characters
featured in Mario Super Sluggers.

The cards began appearing in banner ads on popular children
websites on August 18, 2008, but have since begun to appear as
embedded hyperlinks in other, less obvious locations. Mario
Super Sluggers Cards have been found on other sites, such as
YouTube.

When the Seattle Mariners played the New York
Yankees on September 5, 2008, the game was promoted there at Safeco Field[8]. The
first 20,000 fans received special Mario Super Sluggers
foam mitts. There were also two booths with the game demo, and
Mario Super Sluggers Cards were also passed out there. Every
inning, someone was randomly chosen to win a Wii system along with the game. Whenever a home run
or a good play happened, the Safeco Field video screen showed a
gameplay clip with Mario, Luigi, or Bowser. A
Mario mascot also appeared before the game with the Mariners'
mascot, the Moose, but left after the first inning.